Effective marketing is an essential element in the success of virtually any enterprise in today's competitive marketplace. Marketing methods have shown themselves to be as varied as the human imagination. Product focused marketing has endeavored to advance a product through advertising the value, utility or attractiveness of a specific product, focusing on a through advertising the value, utility or attractiveness of a specific product, focusing on a product itself. Signs and trademarks at a place of business identify the business and its various products to passing consumers. Billboards, radio and TV commercials, and slick full-page ads in national magazines have proven an effective means for advancing the consumer recognition of a good or service. Quantifiable product claims, such as the cubic footage available in a sport utility vehicle or the job placement success for graduates of a university can help consumers select a good or service appropriate to their needs. There are, however, numerous drawbacks to product focused marketing. The first and perhaps most obvious question is a meaningful cost benefit analysis of a particular marketing program. A company that invests in various mediums of advertising may see its sales increase. It is often hard, however, to isolate the one factor or several factors which most effectively lead to increased sales. Statistical models may provide a likelihood of which advertisements are most effective, but in the final analysis, it is generally difficult if not impossible to accurately determine the actual value of a particular ad or other marketing program. Moreover, product focused marketing especially requires a large capital outlay before the beneficial results of product sales are ever realized.
A second problem with product focused marketing is the limited capacity for addressing consumer needs and concerns. With many products, such as an automobile, there are dozens, perhaps hundreds of possible selling points. Every consumer has their own set of priorities, objectives, desires and concerns. In the purchase of an automobile, for example, consumer concerns may range from price, financing schemes available, horse-power, suspension and handling, ABS breaks, the availability of convertible models or sun-roofs, compact disk players, leather interiors, mag-wheels, available colors, air bags, side impact tests and consumer safety ratings, resale value, service and reliability, and even the purchase experience itself, and whether it was an unpleasant experience such as a ‘hard sell.’ A TV commercial may try to anticipate as many consumer concerns as possible, but ultimately, it is impossible to know the needs of every consumer, and equally impossible to address every possible consumer concern in a single commercial. Specialized advertising can oftentimes single out specific demographic or psychographic groups, but some consumer concerns, such as persons averse to a “hard sell,” may be so ubiquitously disbursed throughout the public at large that it becomes virtually impossible to isolate them with low cost targeted advertising as exits in the prior art. Because of this, product focused marketing typically fails to address the interests or concerns of every consumer.
A third problem with product focused marketing is the question of impartiality. No car dealer has ever marketed itself as having “pushy sales people.” Puffery, and product claims advanced by one marketing a good or service are therefore received with a measure of diffidence by the average consumer.
Personality focused marketing has been used to bridge some of the gaps inherent in product focused marketing. In personality focused marketing, testimonials or endorsements are offered by a carefully selected personality. These endorsements are calculated to associate a good or service with a personality who is famous, believable, successful, wealthy or physically attractive. Many of the same problems that attend product focused marketing however are inherent in personality focused marketing. Not only is there the production cost of the TV ad or magazine shoot, there is the added cost of securing the name or appearance of the endorsing party. A famous athlete may be paid ten million dollars a year to promote an athletic shoe. Add to this the cost of production and distribution of posters, radio or TV ads, and the cost benefit question looms larger than ever. As with product focused marketing, the capital outlay precedes any sales return or benefits to the company. Moreover, it may be difficult or impossible to distinguished the value of the personality from the value of the ad or marketing venture itself.
Questions of impartiality may be satisfied in part when endorsement is secured by a personality known for “credibility.” When a sports figure is being paid ten million dollars a year to promote a product, however, charisma may be high, but the perception of impartiality may not be as great.
Direct marketing such as telemarketing can, by asking a series of questions in a survey, identify the concerns of an individual consumer far more accurately than product or personality focused marketing. Nevertheless, telemarketing has its own distinctive drawbacks, not the least of which is that it is considered particularly annoying by a great many consumers. First, the timing is not controlled by the consumer. Rather than sitting down to open mail or look at e-mail in their spare time, a consumer is apt to have their dinner or favorite movie interrupted by a telemarketer. Moreover, in telemarketing situations, a consumer does not fully control his or her evaluation of the good or service. Unlike a piece of conventional (postal) mail which the consumer can easily fold up and throw away, or a TV commercial they can easily turn off or walk away from, not everyone has the same comfort level abruptly terminating an unwanted conversation with a telemarketer. Even for those who have no difficulty hanging up on an unwanted telemarketer, the initial interruption can be enough to be annoying. In response to the proliferation and aggression of telemarketing, many consumers have become resistant and even hostile to this form of marketing, erecting elaborate telephone screening processes at home to avoid contact with telemarketers.
Multi-level marketing, with a common emphasis on recruiting one's friends and acquaintances, was able to address many of the weaknesses inherent in traditional marketing schemes. A person typically has a greater ability to address relevant features of a product when they know the person to whom they are presenting the product. In its earliest days, multilevel marketing grew like rapidly, making a great deal of money for many entrepreneurs. And, at least initially, there was a high level of trust and credibility among friends. As multi-level marketing programs proliferated, however, an increasing percent of the population became exposed to, and recruited by someone in multi-level marketing. The force of such marketing has proven uncomfortable in many instances both for the recruiter and the potential buyer. Many have felt “ambushed,” attending a function on invitation only to learn after arriving that they were being recruited for a sales force in an MLM company. Even long trusted friends are often viewed as suspect when they invite their “friends” to an “opportunity meeting.” Accordingly, the growth in multi-level marketing has been met with a growing level of resistance. MLM's experience various other disadvantages as well. By simple rules of mathematics, only a small percent of the participants can have hundreds or thousands of people under them, a numerical advantage necessary to produce the phenomenal earnings which are so often used to lure people into MLM's. As a consequence, the rewards are not distributed evenly among those promoting the good or service. The revenue disproportionately favors those who began on the “ground floor.” Also, as a result of sales commissions being paid to extensive “downlines,” MLM products are often far more expensive than equivalent products sold through traditional consumer outlets. Finally, new participants are typically required to make a purchase as an up-front cost to get the benefit of participating in sales revenue.
Incentives, such as rewards and discounts, have been a common form of marketing for many years. Direct mailings to consumers often comprise coupons offering a discount for purchasers of a particular good or service. Trading stamps allow consumers to accumulate a theoretical value for collection of purchases. The stamps could eventually be redeemed some good or service. Factory rebates return a portion of the sales cost to a purchaser, effectively lowering the price of the good or service sold. Each of these marketing schemes, however, has its own drawbacks. Many people can remember growing up in homes where an entire desktop or table top devoted to the collection of trading stamps, or the selection and processing of discount coupons. For many consumers, the trouble is not worth the effort. Moreover, reward incentives often fail to address other marketing concerns, such as positioning quality attributes (reliability, fit for use, “fit-and-finish,” etc.), or identification of a product with a trusted endorser.
The explosion of the Internet and the use of e-mail and the Web on the Internet has created a whole new frontier for advertising and marketing. Again, however, many limitations inhere in both of these marketing forums. Web advertising ranges from the highly passive to the highly aggressive. Relying on consumers to locate a good or service through a search engine, or allowing a consumer to stumble onto one's good or service by “surfing the net” is an extremely passive form of advertising, relying on the initiative of the consumer himself. On the other hand, some forms of web advertisement are highly aggressive. Many web-surfing consumers have had the experience of clicking on an Internet advertisement or hypertext to further examine a good or service, only to find themselves trapped in a labyrinthine maze which pops them into a new window every time they try to back out. Much like the frustration engendered by pushy telemarketers, the consumer loses his or her ability to simply say “no” when their computer operations have been commandeered by an overly aggressive, renegade website. Such cyber-manipulation does little too engender confidence within the consuming public, and may well be counter productive to the marketing of most goods and services. E-mail has become a wasteland of “spam.” Some consumers are so inundated with unwanted spam that they are forced to change their e-mail address at regular intervals just to eliminate the amount of incoming spam. The invasion is deemed a personal one by many, and creates a wariness among many consumers with respect to giving away one's e-mail address or clicking on certain web sites. For those who do not elect to change their e-mail address, the alternative is often to avoid the proliferation of burdensome spam by deleting incoming mail when the “from-field” indicates that it is not from a friend.
Another alternative to avoid unwanted spam is to implement a junk e-mail filter to one's e-mail account, but oftentimes such a filter does not eliminate all spam from the account. Spammers have become very adept in altering the titles and body text of their e-mails to look like personal e-mails, to circumvent junk e-mail filters. As a result, even with junk e-mail filters in place, spammers can still spam unsuspecting e-mail account holders with unwanted advertisements and sales proposals. This constant stream of spam has led many e-mail account holders to activate an e-mail address database of friends and families with their junk e-mail filter, so that the junk e-mail filter will automatically delete all other e-mails that do not originate from a recognized e-mail address listed in the e-mail account holder's database.
There exists therefore a need for a method of anti-spam marketing that allows for personalized referrals of specific products through e-mail. There also exists a need for a method of anti-spam marketing that instills confidence to the Provider, the referrer and the referee. The Provider needs to feel confident that the marketing method utilized will reach the intended target audience. The referee needs to feel confident that if he or she refers friends and family members to the product, the referral will not result in spam. The referee needs to feel confident that his or her e-mail account will not be flooded with spam as a result of the referral made by the referee.
There also exists a need for a method of marketing goods and services that can highlight selective product benefits and qualities most likely to be a concern to a particular individual's tastes among a diverse clientele. There further exists a need for a method of marketing goods and services that lends itself to a cost-benefit analysis and the ability to precisely identify and control the marketing cost per unit sale. There is a need for a method of marketing that allows the consumer to determine the time at which he or she will evaluate a marketing solicitation, and further allow them to control the length of time they will spend evaluating the solicitation. A further need is for a method of marketing goods and services that provides the personal endorsement of a trusted or respected party.
There further exists a need for a method of marketing goods and services that provides a reward incentive for a friend or associate recommending the good or service. A further need is for a method of marketing goods or services wherein the reward incentive offered to a recommending party does not appear as a conflict of interest to the prospective client, thereby diminishing the credibility of a person or friend recommending a good or service. Yet another need is for a method of marketing goods and services that does not leave a consumer feeling ambushed or pressured by a friend or relative recommending the good or service. Another need is for a method of marketing goods and services wherein the reward incentives are not disproportionately accumulated among a select few persons. There is a need for a method of marketing that does not create “clutter” or require undue administrative labors in cutting, pasting, sifting, filtering, organizing or managing a program of reward incentives.
There is another need for a method of marketing that can take advantage of the advances in internet and e-mail technology. There is further a need for a method of marketing a good or service which does not passively wait for a consumer to stumble upon the good or service by “surfing the net” or using search engines, but actively advances the marketing interests of a good or service. There exists a need for a method of marketing that does not commandeer the computer operation of a potential client's computer by an interactive and overly-aggressive website. There is a further need for a method of marketing that protects a consumer's confidentiality and privacy, and further protects a consumer from having their name added to mailing lists of aggressive junk mailers or spammers. There further exists a need for a method of marketing wherein the greatest portion of marketing costs are not incurred until after a product is sold.